Ensemble Pi Celebrates the 10thAnniversary ofits Annual Peace Concert Series With "Music & Captivity"
Eleanor Cory:Rikers Island(World Premiere)
Frederic Rzewski:Attica
Olivier Messiaen:Quartet for the End of Time
Excerpt from Joseph Assadourians theatrical piece,The Bullpen
October 10, 2015 at 7:30 p.m. @The Sheen Center, NYC
The rise of mass incarceration and the racial disparities it reveals have become pressing issues today. For the 10thanniversary of its annual Peace Concerts series, the socially conscious music collective Ensemble Pi presents a program of contemporary chamber works written in response to imprisonment, its politics, and the emotional toil it takes on inmates.
The concerts highlight is the world premiere ofRikers Island(2015) by veteran New York composer Eleanor Cory. Scored forclarinet, piano, cello, violin, and a narrator, the work draws mostly from the newly publishedThese Are Hard Times for a Dreamer the fruit of a two-year workshop at Rikers Island, led by NY Writers Coalition. Written by women inmates, the texts and poems mine with great pathos family tragedies and the pain of raising children while being incarcerated.
The program also includes Frederic Rzewskis minimalist masterpiece,Attica(1972), composed in the wake of the 1971 upstate New York prison rebellion. Scored for narrator and open ensemble, the work is based on a letter by Sam Melville, one of the leaders of the Attica riots in which he was killed. It makes use of melodic and harmonic repetitions to convey the frustration of life behind bars and ends with an accumulative crescendo of anger about injustice.
Capping the concert is the sublime Olivier MessiaensQuartet for the End of Time(1941), composed and first performed in the prisoner-of-war camp of Grlitz, Germany. Scored for the four instruments available at the camp clarinet, violin, cello and piano the quartet was premiered at the camp on January 15, 1941 to an audience of fellow prisoners and guards. Due to the fact that the keys of the piano remained lowered when depressed, Messiaen composed a piece that allowed the pianist to push them back between chords,thusintroducing one of the slowest tempi in chamber music.
The evening will also include an excerpt from Joseph AssadouriansThe Bullpen, an acclaimed multi-character, tragi-comic play based on Assadourians experience of being arrested and thrown in a cell with an outrageous collection of races, nationalities and sexual orientations. His fast and virtuosic piece has been playing at the Playroom Theater (West 46thstreet) since earlier this year, to critical acclaim.
Performers:Idith Meshulam, piano;Airi Yoshioka, violin;Katie Schlaikjer, cello;Moran Katz, clarinet;Bill Trigg, percussion; andSycil Mathai, trumpet guest player.
Guest:Joseph Assadourian, actor
Music and Captivitywill take place at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, located at18 Bleecker St. in New York City, on Saturday, October 10 at 7:30 p.m.Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and seniors). To order tickets, visitwww.sheencenter.orgFor more information about the ensemble, visitwww.ensemble-pi.org.
This concert was made possible in part by public funds from the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, and the Fund for Creative Communities supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and administered by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, as well as through the generous support of individual donors.
Ensemble Pi,a socially consciousnew music group founded in 2002, features composers whose work seeks to open a dialogue between ideas and music on some of the worlds current and critical issues.For the last ten years, Ensemble Pi has presented an annual Peace Project concert, commissioning new works and collaborating with visual artists, writers, actors, and journalists such as William Kentridge, Naomi Wolf, Frederic Rzewski, and Philip Miller. The ensemble was in residence for four American music festivals presented by the American Composers Alliance and now collaborates with the APNM. Ensemble Pi can be heard on two CDs, a tribute to Elias Tanenbaum titledKeep Going, and another recording featuring music by Laura Kaminsky.
For more information on the Ensemble Pi:www.ensemble-pi.org